Terry McAulay and Super Bowl XLIII (Cardinals-Steelers, February 2009): Part Three

Let's take a look more at Terry McAulay, the referee for Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers on February 1, 2009.

We know that he has a mixed crew for the Super Bowl, not his usual regular season crew with him, but let's focus on his regular season statistics even though that won't be his complete crew in the Super Bowl.

Teams with less penalty yards won most of the games. In the regular season, the team with less penalty yards accepted against it did extremely well.

Let's start with the raw numbers:

• Home teams had less penalty yards in 6 games and went 6-0 (76-43-1 for all refs).
• Visiting teams had less penalty yards in 9 games and went 5-4 (64-65 for all refs).
  
• Overall, the team with less penalty yards went 11-4 or 73.3%. (139-108-1 or 56.3% for all refs). I excluded the 5 games where the home and visiting teams had the same amount of penalty yards.

Let's look at correlations:

• The correlation to which team won was 0.684 (most for the 17 refs; it was only 0.098 for all refs)
• The correlation to the scoring margin was 0.408 (2nd most for the 17 refs; it was only 0.052 for all refs).

Teams with less number of penalties accepted won most of the games. In the regular season, the team with the less number of accepted penalties (ignoring the number of penalty yards) did very well.

Again, let's start with raw numbers:

• Home team with less penalties: 6-0 (100%). For all refs, 70-41-1 (62.9%)
  
• Visiting team with less penalties: 5-4 (55.6%). For all refs, 54-60 (47.4%)
  
• Overall the team with less penalties went 11-4 (73.3%). For all refs, 114-101-1 (50.7%)

Let's look at correlations:

• The correlation to which team won was 0.614 (most for the 17 refs). It was 0.136 for all refs.
  
• The correlation to the scoring margin was 0.362 (3rd most for the 17 refs). It was only 0.080 for all refs.

For these statistics, Terry McAulay seems overall to have the closest match between penalties called and the odds your team will lose. Roughly speaking, the referees following behind Terry McAulay are Tony Corrente and Gene Steratore. On the other side, the complete opposite of Terry McAulay was Jeff Triplette.

It's difficult to categorize, but the referee with roughly the least correlation between penalties (yards and number) and the game result (scoring margin and raw result) was Walt Coleman. Funny, Walt Coleman had the least number of penalties during the regular season.

Terry McAulay and Super Bowl XLIII (Cardinals-Steelers, February 2009): Part Two

Terry McAulay will be the head referee in Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers on February 1, 2009.

For this second post, let’s look at whether a good offense or a good defense is more important for Terry’s regular season games.

If you look at all 2008 regular season games for all referees, the home team’s offense is the most important followed by the visiting and home team’s defenses. The least important factor is the visiting team’s offense. This does not help us with the Super Bowl because it is a neutral field game -- unless you look at the Super Bowl as if both teams are visitors...

Anyway, let’s take a look at the combined offenses and defenses and see whether a stronger offense or stronger defense was better for the home team. We focus on the perspective of the home team rather than on the stronger team regardless of whether home or visiting to reflect how there is a home team advantage.

Looking at all the games for all referees, there is a similar correlation to the margin of victory for a better offense and a better defense. If we focus on which team won (regardless of the margin of victory), it is more important to have a stronger defense than a stronger offense (0.365 versus 0.288 correlation).

Now let’s focus on Terry McAulay’s regular season games: just like with the analysis of all referees, it is equally good to have a better offense and a better defense when you compare correlations to the margin of victory. But if we focus on which team won (regardless of the margin of victory), it is even more important for Terry than for most referees to have a stronger defense than to have a stronger offense (0.425 versus 0.233 correlation). This favors the Steelers in the Super Bowl.

Take a look at games where one team had a stronger defense but a weaker offense (similar to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl), those teams went 4-3 in Terry’s regular season games. If you exclude the games where one team’s advantage was less than one point per game, the teams went 3-1.

For the 3-1 record, the games where the better defense won over the better offense were: (three wins) Buccaneers 30-21 Packers, Steelers 38-17 Texans, Bills 30-23 Broncos and (one loss) Raiders 3-34 Saints.

This could be good news for the Steelers, but watch out for the really small sample size!

Strong Defense Slightly Better Than Strong Offenses In 2008

Teams with much better defenses did better than teams with much better offenses in the 2008 NFL regular season, but only by a little more than you'd expect from the usual home field advantage so it might not be much of an advantage.

In Super Bowl XLIII, the Pittsburgh Steelers have a much better defense but the Arizona Cardinals have a much better offense. How did this combination of factors play out in the 2008 regular season?

Let's use the number of points scored and given up as a rough measure of how good a team's offense and defense is. It is not certainly not perfect for a variety of reasons (no adjustment of strength of schedule or garbage time scoring), but it is a simple objective measure for our analysis.

Next, let's look at agmes where one team had a stronger offense (better than one point per game) and the other team had a stronger defense (better than one point per game).

When home teams had a stronger offense but weaker defense, they went 22-18, just slightly worse than the average for home teams. When visiting teams had a stronger offense but weaker defense, they went 14-22, slightly worse than the average for visiting teams. This suggests the team with the better defense does slightly better, so a slight advantage to the Steelers.

If we look at teams that had a much stronger offense (better than 5 points per game advantage) but a weaker defense (worse than 5 points per game advantage), we see that this only happened for visiting teams with strong offenses and weaker defenses. It happened 5 times and the visiting team went 2-3, slightly worse than the average for visiting teams, but too small of a sample size to make much of a conclusion.

This analysis doesn't take into account how the Steelers have an advantage with its defense (13.5 points per game) that is much bigger than the Cardinals have a better offense (5.3 points per game).

Terry McAulay and Super Bowl XLIII (Cardinals-Steelers, February 2009): Part One

Terry McAulay will be the head referee in Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers on February 1, 2009.

For the first post, let's take a look at some basics for Terry McAulay:

Some general statistics: total penalties 11.2 (7th of 17 referees), total yards 89 (tied for 8th), average penalty yards per penalty 7.9 (7th), percent penalties against visiting team 49% (10th), total points 41.9 (12th), visiting team points 18.9 (14th), home team points 23 (tied for 10th).

By the way, he has one of the highest home-team win rates out of the 17 referees. In 2008, it was 67%, tied for second. In 2007, it was 75%, which was at or near the highest in 2007. Wonder which team in the Super Bowl would have more fan support to make it seem a bit like a home game.

Terry's games this season include the AFC second-round (the NFL calls it the divisional playoff games) where the Baltimore Ravens beat the Tennessee Titans with a 43-yard field goal on a drive where they snapped the ball after the play clock expired but the referee crew did not call a delay-of-game-penalty. Titans coach Jeff Fisher has called the mistake unacceptable.

The Steelers have the advantage of being more familiar with Terry's games. In week 1, the Steelers hosted the Texans and won 38-17 in a game that Terry McAulay covered.

In Terry McAulay's regular season games, the margin of victory was one of the closest to correlate to what was expected if you look at the won-loss record of the teams or if you look at the net points scored of the teams. Terry was 3rd of 17 referees at 0.420 correlation to the home team's margin of victory excluding the game covered. He was 4th at 0.571 correlation to the home team's won-loss advantage.

The correlation to which team won the game (ignoring the margin of victory) put Terry in the middle of the pack, 9th based on home team's margin of victory excluding the game covered and 11th based on home team's won-loss advantage.

Walt Anderson and the Eagles-Cardinals NFL Championship Game: Final Part

Let's take a wrap-up look at Walt Anderson and the Eagles-Cardinals game.

Interesting calls: (post a comment for calls I didn't catch during the game).

• 3:06 left in the second quarter, short kickoff by the Cardinals possibly hits the fingertips of Eagles blocker Victor Abiamiri (who was at the time inbounds), hits the ground inbounds, then bounces up and possibly hits the arm of Victor Abiamiri (who by that time was standing out of bounds). Some of the first replays suggest it missed Abiamiri's fingertips, hit the ground, and on the upswing hit the Abiamiri's arm. The announces stopped analyzing the play once it was not reviewable, but the proper analysis seems to be that if it was inbounds until it hit an out-of-bounds Abiamiri, the kick should have been flagged as a kickoff out of bounds and the Eagles should have gotten the ball on their 40 yard line (not the spot it went out of bounds, which was only the 27 yard line and cost the Eagles 13 yards). The Eagles eventually gained 9 yards then punted and the Cardinals brought the ball back just enough to kick a 49-yard field goal.
• 1:51 left in the fourth quarter. Eagles QB Donavan McNabb throws a pass on 4th and 10 from the Cardinals 47 and Eagles WR Kevin Curtis is unable to catch it, but complains that just before the ball arrived, a Cardinals defender clipped his leg. The replays suggest that the Cardinals defender perhaps accidentally fell down as the ball was about to arrive and while falling, hit Curtis's leg to some degree. It did not seem intentional, which might have influenced the referee's call. Also, it is not clear how much hitting the leg affected the play -- can't really tell that clearly from the replay.
  

The penalty statistics in the game (which was done by a combination-crew) compared with the regular season statistics for Walt Anderson's full crew and all regular season games:

% penalties against home team: 30% (only one of Walt's 14 regular season games had less -- strangely, a game where the home team lost despite the favorable penalty numbers). For all regular season games, 32 of 256 games (13%) had 30% or less and home teams won 66%.

% penalty yards against home team: 19% (less than all of Walt's 14 regular season games). For all regular season games, 10 of 256 games (4%) had 19% or less and home teams won 70%.

Bill Carollo: Baltimore Ravens - Pittsburgh Steelers AFC Championship Game

Several bloggers and newspapers report that Bill Carollo is scheduled to be the lead referee for the AFC Championship Game between the Ravens and the Steelers. It will be a mixture of crews, so analysis of Bill in the regular season will not apply as much as it would if it were his regular crew. Still, let's take a look at Bill's 2008 NFL regular season.

Raw statistics: 9.8 penalties per game (16th of 17 refs), 77 penalty yards (14th), 7.9 yards per penalty (8th), 53% penalties against visiting team (3rd), 55% penalty yards against visitors (2nd), 39.3 total points scored (17th and last), 18.9 points by visiting teams (13th), 20.3 points by home teams (15th), home teams won 50% (tied for 12th and 13th).

So Bill had the lowest scoring games in the regular season and called some of the least number of penalties per game.

Let's take a quick look at how well favorites do with Bill. If you define favorites as the team with the better net points per game, Bill comes out in the middle of the pack with a correlation of 0.430 (9th of 17) to the winning team (regardless of the final score) and 0.562 (5th) to the scoring margin at the end of the game. The Ravens had a slightly better scoring margin in the regular season than the Steelers.

If you define favorites as the team with the better won-loss record in the regular season, Bill comes out with a slight correlation of 0.114 (11th) to the winning team and some correlation of 0.236 (7th) to the scoring margin at the end of the game. The Steelers had a slightly better won-loss record in the regular season than the Ravens.

Walt Anderson and the Eagles-Cardinals NFC Championship Game: Part Two

Several bloggers think that Walt Anderson (referee #66) will be the ref for the Eagles-Cardinals NFC Championship Game.

Let's take a look at some more statistics for his 2008 regular season.

The Eagles have a slightly better winning percentage than the Cardinals did in the regular season. Better record teams did better in Walt's games with a 0.399 correlation (10th of 17 refs) to which team won and a 0.220 correlation (14th of 17) to the scoring margin.

The Eagles have a better net scoring margin than the Cardinals, better by 3.9 points per game. Walt had little correlation between net scoring margin and the results of his games, though: 0.022 correlation (12th of 17) to which team won and -0.141 correlation (16th out of 17) to the scoring margin.

In another posting, I'll go into how there is an interesting trend through both halves of the 2008 NFL season: the most important factor to which team wins and the scoring margin is the home team's offense. Next important are pretty equal -- the visiting team's offense and the home team's defense. The least important factor is the visiting team's offense. Interesting details!
The Eagles had Walt in the 2008 season and lost 36-7 at Baltimore in week 12. The Cardinals did not have Walt.

Let's take a look at specific games for teams with a better winning percentage.

When the home team had a better record (other than the game Walt was doing), the home teams went 5-1. When the visiting team had a better record, the home teams went 4-4.

Alberto Riveron Best For Favorites And Walt Coleman Best For Underdogs

Which referees are better for the favorites than others?

To look into this, I looked at how well the stronger team did in a referee’s 2008 regular season games did. First, I will focus on the correlation between how much stronger the favorite was and whether the team won (regardless of the scoring margin, so this is focused on won-loss, not margin of victory or beating the spread). A strong predictor of which team is stronger is comparing the net scoring margin for the teams.

By crunching the number for the entire season, we come up with a ranking of the correlation between how much stronger the favorite is and the winning percentage for the favorite. That shows us which referees are better for favorites. Let me know your criticisms or comments on this approach!

The best referees for favorites are Alberto Riveron, Scott Green, Jeff Triplette, and Carl Cheffers.

If your team is an underdog when you look at the net scoring margin, then you want (in order of preference): Walt Coleman, Gene Steratore, John Parry, and Jerome Boger.

I am ranking them by how well the expected scoring margin correlated to which team won. Alberto Riveron was highest with 0.781 and Walt Coleman was lowest with 0.199. For games with all referees, the correlation was 0.512.

There is a big difference between Alberto Riveron and Walt Coleman. The team with the better scoring margin went 14-2 with Alberto Riveron, but only 9-6 with Walt Coleman and 7-8 with Gene Steratore.

For those who expect Walt Anderson to referee the Eagles-Cardinals game, he was 13th out of 17 with a correlation of only 0.395.

Walt Anderson and the Philadelphia Eagles-Arizona Cardinals NFC Championship: Part One

A few message boards and blogs are suggesting that Walt Anderson might be the referee for the Eagles-Cardinals NFC championship game.

If that's the case, let's look at Walt Anderson's statistics for the full 2008 NFL season.  It's possible the NFL will assign a mixed crew for him, so maybe these statistics won't apply completely, but it's what we have so let's take a look at them even if we have to hedge a bit because his crew might be a little different.

In this post, we look at some basic statistics.  We'll look at more specific statistics in another blog posting soon.

Rankings are out of 17 referee crews

Penalties per game: 12.6 (3rd).  12.7 in 2007

Penalty yards: 96 (6th).  97 in 2007

Yards per penalty: 7.7 (13th).  7.6 in 2007

Percent penalties on visiting team: 52% (5th).  50% in 2007

Number of penalties on visiting team more than home team: 0.6 (4th).  0 in 2007

Total points: 41.2 (13th) 41.7 in 2007

Visitor points: 17.9 (17th and last).  20.3 in 2007

Home points: 23.4 (9th).  21.3 in 2007

Home win rate: 64% (4th), 60% (9th) in 2007

So visiting teams scored very little in Walt's games in 2008.  Generally he had lower-scoring games.  It wasn't due to the strength of the teams, either.  If you look at the overall scoring and defenses of the teams in Walt's 2008 games, they would have worked out to be equal for visiting teams and home teams.

More statistics and analysis to come later...

Referee Bill Leavy and the Chargers-Steelers Playoff Game

Now that the game is underway, it looks like Bill Leavy is the referee for the NFL playoff game between the San Diego Chargers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Basic Statistics
First, some basic statistics. Rankings are out of 17 NFL referee crews.

Total penalties accepted: 10.7 (11th), 12.1 in 2007
Total yards: 83 (11th), 94 in 2007
Yards per penalty: 7.8 (10th), 7.7 in 2007
% penalties on visitors: 51% (7th), 56% in 2007
% penalty yards on visitors: 49% (7th), 54% in 2007
Total points scored: 50.2 (2nd), 41.5 in 2007
Visitors points: 24.2 (1st), 21.0 in 2007
Home points: 26.0 (3rd), 20.5 in 2007
% home win rate: 60% (tied for 7th through 10th), 45% in 2007

So what's striking is that his game had lots of points scored (2nd highest for total points, highest for visiting teams, 3rd highest for home teams). Yet home teams scored more than visiting teams overall and won 60% of the games, which is roughly middle of the pack.

San Diego has seen Bill this season in a week 6 win over the New England Patriots 30-10. Pittsburgh has not seen Bill this season.

Analyzing Won-Loss Records of Bill's Games
Steelers have 4 more regular season wins than the Chargers. When the home team had more wins (excluding the game Bill covered) in the regular season, the home team went 5-1. Specifically, +11 (win), +6 (win), +6 (win), +3.5 (win), +1 (loss), +1 (win).

By the way, when the home team was equal, the home team went 1-0, and when the home team had a worse record, the home team went 3-5.

Another way to look at it is that the team that had the better record went 10-4 in Bill's games in the regular season.

Analyzing Net Points Records of Bill's Games
The Steelers are +1.0 in net points over the Chargers.
Home teams with more than 1.0 in net points advantage went 5-0.
Home teams with 0.7 net points advantage went 1-1. (Vikings 34-14 Bears; Jets 17-24 Dolphins)
Home teams with between +0.5 and -0.5 advantage went 2-0
Home teams with -1.0 or worse went 1-5.
There is more of a correlation between the net points and the final scoring margin in Bill's games than the won-loss records.

Terry McAulay and the Ravens-Titans Playoff Game

Terry McAulay is the referee for the Baltimore Ravens-Tennessee Titans playoff game. Let's take a quick look at our statistics for him in the 2008 NFL regular season.

He has one of the highest home-team win rates out of the 17 referees. In 2008, it was 67%, tied for second. In 2007, it was 75%, which was at or near the highest in 2007. This is good news for the Titans if you believe this is a trend.

If you look at the schedule, though, 9 of the 15 games had home teams with a better record than the visiting teams, so maybe it was just a reflection of the schedule.

In the regular season, the Titans had 2 more wins than the Ravens. When the home team had more wins, they went 7-2 in Terry's games.

If we look at the net margin of victory, the teams are equal. In the regular season, when the visiting team had only a slightly better margin of victory, the visiting team won (Giants at Eagles, week 10). Once they were pretty much equal and the home team won (Packers at Bucs, week 4).

Some general statistics: total penalties 11.2 (7th of 17 referees), total yards 89 (tied for 8th), average penalty yards per penalty 7.9 (7th), percent penalties against visiting team 49% (10th), total points 41.9 (12th), visiting team points 18.9 (14th), home team points 23 (tied for 10th).

2008 NFL Team Schedules by Referee Home-Win Rate

What if we assumed just for the sake of argument that every referee has a tendency to favor home or visiting teams by the same degree throughout the year. This is not what we really think, but it can lead us to some statistics that we can discuss and debate.

Let's take the home team win-rate for each referee and see which teams had the easiest and hardest NFL referee schedule in 2008.

Using each referee's actual home-team win rate in 2008 and combining that with each NFL team's referee schedule, here are the statistics. Post your thoughts and comments!

Team, followed by expected wins based on 2008 NFL referee schedule:
Carolina Panthers 8.75
Miami Dolphins 8.47
New Orleans Saints 8.45
Baltimore Ravens 8.41
New England Patriots 8.37
Atlanta Falcons 8.35
Minnesota Vikings 8.30
Pittsburgh Steelers 8.24
Philadelphia Eagles 8.23
New York Jets 8.21
Indianapolis Colts 8.20
Tennessee Titans 8.17
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 8.11
Washington Redskins 8.11
Jacksonville Jaguars 8.10
San Francisco 49ers 8.07
Denver Broncos 8.03
Cincinnati Bengals 8.01
Detroit Lions 7.93
Oakland Raiders 7.92
New York Giants 7.91
Houston Texans 7.89
Arizona Cardinals 7.84
Dallas Cowboys 7.76
St. Louis Rams 7.76
San Diego Chargers 7.68
Cleveland Browns 7.65
Seattle Seahawks 7.58
Chicago Bears 7.53
Green Bay Packers 7.35
Buffalo Bills 7.32
Kansas City Chiefs 7.28

If you believe this chart, then maybe the Carolina Panthers and Miami Dolphins are not as strong as their record would indicate because they had favorable referee schedules. On the other hand, the San Diego Chargers, Arizona Cardinals, and NY Giants made the playoffs despite having unfavorable NFL referee schedules. Maybe they are stronger than their records would suggest?

Any other insights if we play along with this chart? That the Chicago Bears (barely missed a wild card spot) might have had a better season with a more favorable referee schedule? That the New England Patriots (barely missed a wild card spot) can't really complain because they had a very favorable referee schedule?

Referee Jeff Triplette and the SD Chargers - Pittsburgh Steelers Playoff Game

I don't know for certain who will be the referee in the Chargers-Steelers playoff game but a few people think it will be Jeff Triplette. Let's take a look at the statistics for Jeff Triplette in the 2008 regular season.

UPDATE: Looks like Bill Leavy is the ref, not Jeff Triplette, so let me try to do a new blog post with statistics on Bill Leavy instead. Look for a separate post on Bill Leavy.

Recent history:
2008, wk 17: Cleveland Browns 0-31 Pittsburgh Steelers
2008, wk 7: San Diego Chargers 14-23 Buffalo Bills
2007, wk 15: KC Chiefs 9-20 San Diego Chargers
2007, wk 3: Cincinnati Bengals 28-20 Pittsburgh Steelers

So, the Steelers have more recent experience with Jeff Triplette's crew and this year, Steelers won and Chargers lost with him. But in 2007, it was the reverse -- Chargers won and the Steelers lost.

Home teams went 9-6 in Jeff's games in 2008. (They went 10-5 in 2007.)

Let's take a look at how home teams did in games using the won-loss record (excluding the game that Jeff Triplette did) as a yardstick:

• When the home team had more wins, they went 5-1. When equal, 1-1. When less, 3-4. In the regular season, the home team Steelers had 4 more wins than the Chargers.
• Correlation between won-loss record and margin of victory was 0.66

Let's use the net points scored as the yardstick rather than won-loss records:

• When the home team had a better net points total, they went 6-1, when roughly equal, 1-0, when less, 2-4. In the regular season, the Steelers had 1.0 better net points total per game than the Chargers.
• Correlation between net points total and margin of victory was 0.78

Total points scored: using the particular teams in Jeff's regular season games, you'd expect 43.9 points per game and the actual results were close: 43.6 total points per game in Jeff's games. The actual results were an average of 20.9 points by visiting teams and 23.0 points by home teams this season. (In 2007, it was 18.2 for visitors and 25.3 for home teams.)

Regular Season Statistics:
Very large number of total accepted penalties per game. Out of 17 referees, he had 12.5 per game (2nd). Pretty large total penalty yards accepted per game at 99 (4th). Middle of the pack for yards per penalty (8.0, 9th) and percent of penalties called against the visiting team (49%, 9th). Also pretty average for total points scored per game (43.9, 9th). Visiting team points per game was 21.0 (8th) and home team points per game was 22.9 (tied for 10th).

The home win rate was 57%, which was middle of the pack, tied for 7th through 10th. (This season, home teams won 57.2% of the games.)

The 2007 Regular Season:
For comparison purposes, here is what we wrote about Jeff Triplette and the 2007 regular season: Tied for 5th out of 17 for best ref for the home team's winning rate (67%). Near the bottom in penalties per game (14th) and yards per penalty (15th) so of course near the bottom in penalty yards per game (15th). 4th-most for percent of penalties called against the visiting team (55%). Middle of the pack (9th) in total points scored per game and near the top (4th) in home team points scored per game. Near the bottom (16th) in amount of penalty yards called against the home team at just 36.8 per game. Tied at the top in the percent of his games in which the visiting team had more penalties than the home team (70%). Overall, home teams did pretty well in Jeff's games during the regular season with not so many penalties called per game -- especially few called against the home team.

Please post a comment if you find this helpful or have questions. Remember, I'm not certain whether the referee for the SD-Pittsburgh game really will be Jeff Triplette. UPDATE: looks like Bill Leavy so I'll try to put a new blog post on him.

Ron Winter in the Colts-Chargers Wild Card Game

There was a great deal of controversy over Ron Winter's referee crew in the wild card game between the San Diego Chargers and the Indianapolis Colts.

I will try to crunch the numbers for his crew for the 2008 NFL season to see if I can spot any trends from the raw statistics that I've been tracking.

The controversy seems to be up for debate, as opposed to other games this season where people unanimously believed the referees made mistakes.

Some questions (with critics and defenders of the referees for each point) include:

• 10:04 left in OT, defensive holding called on Colts's CB Tim Jennings on what would otherwise have left SD with a 4th-and-8 on the Colts's 40 yard line. Some think it should not have been a penalty while others think it was a penalty and should have been defensive pass interference.
• 12:51 left in OT, defensive holding on the Colts's DT Eric Foster.
• Non-calls against SD for possible offensive holding or illegal hands to the face while stopping DE Dwight Freeney.
• Non-call in OT against Chargers's center Nick Hardwick for possible holding.

The accepted penalties ended up at 9 penalties for 74 yards against Indianapolis and 3 penalties for 40 yards against San Diego.

That does not include 2 penalties called against the Colts that were declined. (If you include those, then the called penalties were 11 against the Colts and 3 against the Chargers.) I'll look into how this compares with regular season games this season...

Ron Winter and the 2008 NFL regular season referee statistics:

• 13.6 accepted penalties per game, 1st out of 17 crews (2nd was 12.7). His crew also had the most in 2007.
  
• 114 accepted penalty yards per game, most (2nd was 107). He was 2nd in 2007.
  
• 8.4 penalty yards per penalty, 3rd most. He was 9th in 2007.
  
• 49% of penalties were against the visiting teams (12th out of 17)
• 45.3 points per game (7th of 17)
• 24.8 points by the home team per game (5th of 17)
• 63% of the time, the home team won (6th of 17). He was tied for 15th in 2007 (40%). The league average was 56.8% this year (2008).

Was the game unusual for having 9 penalties for 74 yards for the visiting Colts and 3 penalties for 40 yards for the home team (Chargers)?

• Is it unusual for there to be a 6 penalty disparity in favor of the home team? In the 2008 season, out of 256 games, one was +9 for the home team, 2 were +8 for the home team, 3 were +7 for the home team, and 6 were +6 for the home team. So only 12 of 256 games were +6 or more for the home team. (Home teams won 50%)
  
• Is it unusual to have only 25% of the penalties against the home team? There were 12 games where the home team had less than 25% of the penalties and 5 games where the home team had 25% of the penalties -- so in 17 out of 256 games the home team had 25% or less of the penalties. Home teams won 76% of those games. Putting aside games where the disparity was 4-0, 4-1, 3-1, or 5-1, the list is:
• Scott Green, StL-NE, 9-0 penalties
• William Carollo, Ariz-Sea, 8-1
• Tony Corrente, Ind-Hou, 6-1
• Terry McAulay, TB-Atl, 11-3
• Gene Steratore, NO-Atl, 7-2
• Terry McAulay, NYG-Minn, 7-2
• Bill Leavy, Det-SF, 9-3
• Peter Morelli, NYG-Ariz, 9-3
• Walt Anderson, Car-SD, 6-2
• [Ron Winter, Ind-SD, 9-3]
• Is it unusual that 35.1% of the penalty yards were called against the home team? Not really. Out of 256 games, the home team had less than 35% of the penalty yards in 49 games. (Home teams won 59%)
  
• There were 29 games in the regular season where the visiting team was penalized by 34 or more yards than the home team. (Home teams won 54%)
  
• Home teams had 3 or less accepted penalties in 57 games (home teams won 69%)
• Home teams had 40 penalty yards or less in 125 games (home teams won 60%)
  
• Visiting teams had 9 or more accepted penalties in 37 games (home teams won 57%)
• Visiting teams had 74 or more penalty yards in 26 games (home teams won 62%)

How did home teams do for Ron Winter's games considering the particular won-loss records of the teams (excluding the game that Ron Winter did)? Let's use the won-loss record as a yardstick for whether we'd expect a team to win.

• The Colts-Chargers game had the home team with 4 less wins than the visiting team. Here is Ron Winter's distribution, listing how many more victories the home team had other than the game Ron did and whether the home team won. The Colts-Chargers game had a home team net record of -4: -8L, -7W, -6L, -1.5L, -1L, -1W, 0L, 0W, 2W, 2W, 2.5W, 5L, 5W, 6.5W, 8W, 10W. So it looks like when the home team has less wins, they went 2-5 and when it had more wins, it went 7-1. The biggest upset in favor of a home team was in week 7, when the home team Green Bay beat the visiting Colts 34-14.

Another way to predict how good teams are is to check only the points scored and points allowed, but not their won-loss rate. Using this approach, SD was favored by 0.4 points (their net points was better than the Colts's.)

• When the home team has better net points, they went 6-1 with Ron Winter's games this season. When the home team was equal or -1, they went 2-0. When the home team was more than 1.0 points an underdog using this method, they went 2-5.
  

Requests for More Analysis of a Particular Referee Crew?

Post a comment about which referee crew you would like more analysis about.  There are several referee crews and too many for me to try to analyze all at once.  Post a comment with your request of which one you'd like me to focus on.  If you include an explanation why, that might help me out, too!